Chapter Nine
Emily
I would have paid good money to be put at almost any other table in the diner than the one that our waitress—Margot—brought us to, which was only two down from where Rhett was seated with some other people from the town. Focus, Em. You’re here to do a job.
I hadn’t told my dad anything about the night I’d spent on the Baxter farm, but had instead just thrown myself into getting the kind of information that he needed: who we should approach first, what kinds of ballparks we should be considering as offers, things like that.
As we sat down, Jacob did his best to get the seat right next to me at the table. I wasn’t fond of that, but I wasn’t about to make a scene; I needed to focus on the task at hand.
“Thanks for meeting with us,” Dad said to the men who’d come to have lunch and discuss the possibility of selling their land to us for development. “I think that we have a lot to gain from each other.”
“We really want to make sure that if you do decide to sell to us, you get fair value for your land,” I added. “That’s important to us—we want to become a part of this community.”
“Emily’s right,” Jacob said, reaching an arm out and putting it around my shoulders. “We’re a family, and we want to bring Mustang Ridge into our family—as well as joining all of your families.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at how trite that was, but I knew better. Instead I glanced over at where Rhett sat, and caught the flare of irritation in his eyes before he turned back to whatever discussion he was having.
We managed to get halfway through the pitch before Rhett’s party broke up, and I saw the people sitting at the table with him leaving one by one, saying goodbye to the other people they knew at the diner—which was just about everyone—on their way out, until it was just Rhett. I’d mostly kept quiet, since Dad and Jacob were the big sales guys, and Dad especially was good at holding court, talking about what the benefits would be to the community.
Jacob kept finding excuses to touch me, and it irritated me—but not nearly as much as it seemed to irritate Rhett. I couldn’t be sure if it annoyed him because it was Jacob, or because Jacob was touching me—brushing his hand against mine, touching my shoulder, shifting so that his leg pressed up against mine—but I was glad I wasn’t alone in that bit of annoyance I felt.
Finally, Rhett rose from his table and came over to ours, nodding to some of the people sitting with us. “I see you know what’s going on in the town,” Rhett said to them. “Hey, Emily.” He half-scowled at Jacob, before wiping his face of everything but a friendly, polite expression.
“We’re just having a talk with these fine folks about a project we have going on,” Dad said.
“Apparently not everyone here feels the same way that you do about the opportunity we’re presenting them,” I told Rhett tartly.
“Not everyone here has the same circumstances,” Rhett observed. “It can be tempting to look at money now instead of the long-term effect of what selling would be.”
“Making money now is always good,” Jacob countered. “I mean, how do you get money later? You make smart decisions with it now—invest, get out of dying industries.”
“Industries aren’t dying when there’s still demand for them,” Rhett told him firmly. “There are lean times and good times, but there will always be a demand for people who know how to work the land and take care of it, and how to keep their money for a rainy day.”
“Sometimes money runs out,” one of the people we’d been talking to—a guy named Brad—said. “I don’t think any of us could blame someone for wanting a chance to make their lives better.” He gave Rhett a significant look, and I remembered what I’d learned about him the day of our big tour of the town: that he’d gone away to school, to Notre Dame, and then gone on to become an NFL player for a season, before coming back to the town.
“Some people just can’t get over their small-town prejudices,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“I know that this looks like a golden parachute,” Rhett told the people who’d come to talk to us. “I get why it’s tempting to think about. But we’ve all got to think about more than just ourselves and our situations in this.”
“Spoken like someone who hasn’t been through a bad patch,” one of the men at the table said.
“I do get that a lot of us are hurting,” Rhett said. “I know why there’s a temptation to go for the easy solution. But bringing in a huge company would end up killing the town in the long run, and none of us would win. What are we going to do when the whole economy of the town is screwed up?”
“How do you know it’s going to be screwed up?” I crossed my arms over my chest and angled away from Jacob a bit. I didn’t need him encouraging me.
“Because the grocery store, the dry goods store—probably almost everything but the church and the diner—would go out of business,” Rhett said. “And the people who sell off their land are going to end up not being able to make the right use of it—they’re going to end up losing that money you give them.”
“Not if they’re smart with it,” I countered. “The kind of money we can offer is enough to start up a new business.”
“But how are they going to start a new business? This town works because we have what we need,” Rhett said. He seemed to have forgotten completely about the people he was supposed to be talking to—his fellow people from the town, fellow farmers. “We all work hard, and all that’s going to happen is that at best, a bunch of people will move to town to work for the big company—whoever it is—and they’ll be taking jobs that the people here need. There won’t be anything for anyone. All Mustang Ridge will be is another suburb, filled with people who have nothing to do with the town.”
“It sounds to me like you’re trying to justify having an opportunity that you don’t want others to get,” I said, feeling defensive.
“What on earth do you mean?” Rhett demanded.
I glanced at my father. I knew what Dad would want me to do: destroy Rhett’s credibility so that no one sitting at the table would take what he had to say seriously. I had to do it; he was hurting our pitch.
“I mean that the guy who got a free ride to an Ivy League school probably doesn’t really know what the lean times are,” I said. “I mean—you just got your farm ten years ago, right? And you had an opportunity that no one else from this town has ever gotten, so now you think you can tell them what to do with their own property.”
“I’m not saying that at all,” Rhett said, his face settling into angry lines. “I’m saying that this community is worth saving.”
“And in all that education you got, no one ever taught you that times change, did they?” I shook my head and glanced at Dad again. He was nodding approvingly, and for a second I felt good, because he liked what I was doing. But when I looked up at Rhett again, I felt miserable. I continued despite my misery, “I mean, it’s one thing for you to refuse to sell to us—that’s your right. But it’s not like you’re any smarter than the rest of these people, even with that fancy education you got yourself.”
“I’m not smarter, but I know when I’m dealing with dishonest people.” Rhett gave me a cold look and turned away from me. “I’ll talk to you guys about this later. I hope at least they’re paying for your lunch.”
He left the table and headed for the door, and I thought—for just a second—that it was over. That we would go back to pitching the idea of buying the farmland, and I would forget about the confrontation between Rhett and me completely.
But after less than a minute I thought about what I’d actually done. I had been educated too; I’d gone to a good university, and I’d had—if not exactly the same level of opportunity—then at least enough education to know that what I had just pulled wasn’t okay. I couldn’t argue Rhett’s actual point, so I’d sunk to a level that I would have expected to see from Jacob—insulting Rhett instead of having an actual debate.
You were doing what had to be done. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t the most intellectually rigorous path, I told myself, as Dad tried to bring the topic back around to selling land and what it would do for the town. But if I really had that strong a position and if I really thought this was the right thing to do, wouldn’t I be able to argue just on that merit? Why did I think that these people should sell to us, anyway? I thought it mostly because it was good for Dad’s business—and by extension, my job. I thought it was good because it would bring in a new business to the community, but I knew that there was not much of a chance that the people in Mustang Ridge would benefit as much as the company. Even the ones who sold their land for the project would have a good hundred thousand or so—if that—and then they would have to figure out what to do with their smaller allotments, how to make a living with the behemoth next door dominating the property.
I went back and forth like that for what felt like an eternity, but when I checked my phone—quickly—I saw it had only been about a minute or two. I had to get out of the diner, I had to get out of the discussion that was starting up all around me again, and clear the air, if possible, with Rhett.
“I need to step outside for a minute,” I told Dad. “Phone’s ringing from the office.” It wasn’t, but I got up and disentangled myself from Jacob—who seemed to have decided to be a barnacle today—and headed for the door myself, hoping that I wasn’t too late to at least try and talk to Rhett.
He was on his way to his truck as I left the diner, and I hurried after him, hoping that I wasn’t making some great big spectacle of myself.